To voice solidarity with Ukraine, the famous peer-to-peer trading platform LocalBitcoin has exempted all fees on donated Bitcoins to Ukraine. As a result, the residents of Ukraine can now cash out their Bitcoins in local currency with no fees.
LocalBitcoin published the announcement via a tweet on March 01 introducing a free Bitcoin wallet “for all Ukrainians in Ukraine & abroad,” which exempts additional fees on Bitcoin transfers. Removing fees on its platform is part of its help to Ukrainian citizens besieged by the Russian army.
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Expressing sympathy with Ukrainians, the firm LocalBitcoin added that its “core value is freedom.” Consequently, the LocalBitcoin removes fees on Bitcoin transfers to Ukranian Wallets alongside the removal of conversion fees for Bitcoins cashed out in Ukraine’s currency, Hryvnia.
The use of cryptocurrencies in Ukraine has risen since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine started. Similarly, Ukraine has surpassed $20 million in donations sent via cryptocurrencies. The government of Ukraine also officially launched crypto wallets aimed at receiving donations from abroad.
Ukraine NFTs have also become popular. Trading platform Ikonia has recently launched an NFTs sale to raise funds for charity in which 10% of the royalty fee will be donated to charity when each NFT is sold. Over 43 million NFTs editions are listed aimed at gathering $432,875,120.
As the West has been banning Russia at international levels over its Ukraine invasion, the Vice President of Ukraine also requested cryptocurrency exchanges to ban Russian wallet addresses. In response, few urged it’s not so simple as while some tech giants like Google and Meta has already restricted them to some extent.
LocalBitcoin And Others Crypto Platforms
Although LocalBitcoin is not the only platform that showed its support for Ukraine. But it has seen a positive response from crypt-friendly people. On the other hand, as the overall crypto-space does not belong to only the West, many platforms also denied canceling their operations in Russia, which has become loud criticism.
Ukrainian authorities are also afraid that sanctioned individuals and Russia can use digital currencies to prevent the effects of sanctions. The executives and founder of many platforms, as Kraken’s CEO Jesse Powell, have said he respects Ukrainians, but it wouldn’t be good to restrict all Russians, and they need legal requirements.
Related Reading | The Russia-Ukraine War Is Becoming A War On Crypto
While some of the platforms preferred to take a middle ground, for example, Binance has decided to restrict users on the list of sanctions and allowed others. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao called sanction for blocking all Russian “Unethical” and added;
Whoever is on the sanctions list, they won’t be able to use our platform; for whoever is not, they can. It’s not our decision to make to freeze user accounts. Facebook hasn’t banned Russian users. Google hasn’t banned Russian users. Google has not blocked off Russia. The U.S. hasn’t done that.
Featured image from Pixabay and chart from TradingView.com
